Facial Recognition

I am going to cover our social media habits and impacts on children in a separate post, probably in many posts. Before that, I want to share a recent breach that can help you understand WHY I am going to make a big deal out of children in social media.

Have you heard of a company called Clearview AI? This company collected billions of pictures from the internet and created a facial recognition capability by using Artificial Intelligence.

Linn Freedman practices in data privacy and security law, cybersecurity, and complex litigation. She also happens to be an incredible professor for the Brown University Executive Masters Program in Cybersecurity.

Professor Freedman discussed this on her blog just last month, and here we are hit with the news that the company has been breached. CNET covers the story here, please read. Please do not take it lightly that the journalist is pointing out that this company “has a database of 3 billion photos that it collected from the internet, including websites like YouTube, Facebook, Venmo, and LinkedIn.”

This is a big deal, and I want to leave you with a few things to chew on concerning this breach:

• This is not the only company you have not heard of that scrapes the internet collecting pieces of information about you and monetizes it.
• This is by no means harmless. Your information is now in hands you didn’t intend it to be.
• “I have nothing to hide” is a dangerous thought. A single photo or post may be benign, but you see companies can scrape the entire internet. Do you see the potential that one day, someone else will know about you more than you do?
• Artificial intelligence is in its infancy, and it can already do more than most of us understand.

Parents, I know you have heard “whatever you put on the Internet, assume it is permanent.” It is not only true, and now may be incomplete. I suggest, “whatever you put on the Internet, assume it is permanent, and you don’t know how it could be used for or against you.”

I look forward to hearing your thoughts on this.